Saturday, 31 December 2005

Saturday Video Classix

I’m quite sure nobody gives a toss about these but I’ve got about three thousand more in the pipeline and god dammit you’re going to get EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Maybe some twice just to really reinforce the fact that the front page now takes four hours to load when it used to take four seconds. And the day I find the video of Rupert Holmes singing the Pina Colada song on Countdown? Wild freaking scenes.

Anyway, it’s time for one of my favourite videos ever. Not because there’s anything particuarly good about it, but rather due to it’s obscenely high “What the fuck is going on there?” content. Write in at the usual address if you have decided what gear they were on when they came up for the idea of, and subsequently appeared in the video. I quite like the song itself - I’ve never been for anything else Fleetwood Mac ever did, and indeed I wouldn’t be able to tell Fleetwood from Mac in a police lineup, but this is just odd. Not as odd as the video mind you but it all ties in somewhere. If there’s ever a song that nobody realises is full of messages telling you to gun down your family then this is it.

And now, in our biggest special yet, the video. Sit back and enjoy. For maximum enjoyment play the song at the same time and try to work out what they were thinking.

When one of the biggest bands in the world, coming off an album that sold 50 zillion copies and made them a fortune, opens their video with a college marching band rocking out in the middle of the stadium you know the line has probably been crossed.

And when one of the band members makes her first appearance honking onto the grog in the first few seconds it’s all confirmed.

This is a man who will rapidly, RAPIDLY lose the plot throughout the course of the following 3 minutes and 5 seconds.

And there he goes. Dancing around like a nutbag in the middle of a baseball field while hundreds of people watch on.

A closer look at the script. The extra featured in this shot is wondering just what will Bearded Nutbag get up to next.

He’ll hear voices through his headphones. God is telling him that he’s making a dick of himself but is still richer than the rest of us combined so carry on regardless.

This picture has absolutely no artistic benefit, but the woman in green has sweet hooters so she’s worthy of inclusion in my book. Might have been in the band for all I know.

Nutbags McNut announces his next move…

Crazy dancing! The steps contained within were so impressive that I had to rush out and find some shithouse animated GIF maker program just to document it. Bounce! Bounce! Bounce! He’s getting off on the crazy jungle rhythms being created by the house band. Not to mention the river of substances potentially flowing through his veins.

Stevie Nicks plays cheerleader and twirls the baton…

And then stares blankly into the camera. Need we remind you at this time that the urban myth about her having a flunky blow cocaine directly into her ass through a straw so it would absord quicker has never been proven. The woman who nobody recognises is just tucking into another glass of white in the background.

Suddenly McNut shows up with a cardboard cutout of somebody. Might be him before he lost the plot, might be somebody else. Might even be the guy who was in the band and then decided to dedicate himself to being in a bizarre religious cult instead. Who knows. What’s important is that it’s one of the few examples in music video history of a cardboard cutout being part of the band. In 2003 Alf Poier would provide the greatest Eurovision Song Contest performance in history with a backing band consisting of a cardboard cow.

According to Wikipedia this is the only song featuring a marching band ever to make the US Top Ten. Your challenge, if you’re one of the great bands of the world and are reading, is to change this stat. Rip out the trombones and let’s make things interesting.

The band go wild in the otherwise empty stands. The cardboard cutout guy looks especially pumped to be there. Not quite as pumped as Stevie who definately did not have coke blown up her ass at any time during her career.

In the end it’s revealed that all of this is going on in an empty stadium. Why? I don’t know. But somehow it makes sense. The idea that 99% of the video is a “making of” special for the ten second parade of the marching band at the very end when the lyrics have finished appeals to me in some post-modern way that mankind is not yet fully developed enough to understand. Every time I’ve ever seen this video I end up contemplating the nature of life and whether or not we’re living in some sort of bizarre Matrix style system. Thanks Fleetwood. Thanks Mac. You’ve done my head in.